pfSense Digest

2.0 Release Now Available!

I’m proud to announce the release of version 2.0. This brings the past three years of new feature additions, with significant enhancements to almost every portion of the system. The changes and new features are summarized here. This is by far the most widely deployed release we’ve put out, thanks to the efforts of thousands of members of the community. We also have hundreds of customer systems that have been running 2.0 in production for months and years in some cases. More than 108,000 unique IPs have downloaded snapshots in 2011 from snapshots.pfsense.org alone, not counting downloads from the mirrors.

Upgrade considerations

It is very important to read the upgrade guide before performing an upgrade.

Download

NOTE: With 2.0 release and newer versions, we’re now also building the oft-requested nanobsd embedded version with VGA! You’ll find alternate builds with VGA in the filename, which are the VGA-enabled versions. Only use these on hardware with VGA video. The regular serial version must be used on all hardware that has only a serial port, like the popular PC Engines and Soekris models amongst others, as they will not boot or function correctly otherwise.

Documentation

Every page in 2.0 has a help link via the question mark on the top left of each page, which takes you to a page on the documentation site with information pertaining to that screen. Almost every page links to some level of detail, and that will be growing by the day in the weeks and months to come.

There is a growing amount of documentation available in the 2.0 category of the documentation site. An updated book is in the works, but no release date yet determined. More info on that will come soon. Currently the best source of info in the world on the project is still our existing book, and the updated information available via help links in the web interface and the 2.0 category. Much more to come.

Credits

This release is the result of years of work from dozens of people on the development alone, plus thousands who have helped with testing snapshots. Most importantly are those who financially support the project. As I will cover more in a future post, this release would have never happened if not for having adequate financial support to employ multiple people full time to work on the project. Hundreds of companies have contributed and we’re very grateful for their support. I would like to thank our largest supporters here individually.

I just wanted to say that. I use 2.0 RC3 and it works without any quirks I have found. PFSense is a product I love to think about as little as possible. And that is high praise from me, since I believe the best software is the software that just works and demands little or no attention. Off course you have to keep updated about security problems and read logs. But in a world of buggy, troublesome and chatty software PFSense feels like a calm backwater. Great work Scott and the rest of you! //Stripecat

I don’t know if the *_vga.img.gz images are what i think they are (vga support!), but if they are (downloading right now to test asap) you guys rock even more than you already did (if that is even possible)!!!

NOTE: DO NOT use those on hardware that only has a serial port, like those from PC Engines, Soekris, and many others. Only use the regular nanobsd on such hardware. Anything with VGA where you don’t want to use a serial console, use the VGA ones.

We’re updating a page with info on what filename is what and will link it in this post then.

Even though all RC’s of 2.0 have been very stable, I have waited a long time for this stable release to use in production. Well worth the wait, a fantastic release it is! Thank you to all developers and testers.

Phenomenal work team! I have also been using RC3 in production on a few boxes and at home from RC1. pfSense is a wonderful project and all the contributors deserve a huge THANK YOU! All the time you put in is well appreciated. Enjoy the weekend!

Thanks for all the hard work, glad to finally see 2.0 released! Now friends will be more comfortable with my recommendation to run 2.0 even though I’ve been running the betas for over a year Going to miss the 2.0 dev forum though…

And for any asking about upgrading from the RC to stable, go to Firmware->Updater Settings tab->pick pfSense Stable Release (platform) to match your system under Default Auto Update URLs, leave the Firmware Auto Update URL checked but the URL itself will change to http://updates.pfsense.org/_updaters. Uncheck the “allow unsigned images” checkbox for security since the stable release is signed. Save, then return to the Auto Update tab and you should see the RELEASE version with a Sept. 13th build date (instead of Sept. 11th as you probably saw before). You can now auto-upgrade normally to the release version, it’s worked for me 6-10 times already.

Been running 2.0 since the beta days and it’s been very solid as the main firewall/NAT for our motel’s public wi-fi network. We don’t stress the old machine (or pfSense) very much here, so it’s been very reliable other than the occasional obscure bug.

I just noticed you’re putting out NanoBSD images with VGA–W00T!! I was just about to upgrade a Firebox 500 (non-X-version) and was also thinking about putting it on the main firewall box (an old PC), replacing the hard drive with a CF card and adapter–this will make that much easier!

Thanks again, guys, for making such great software! I know it was a rocky start, but now this is rock-solid, and a great way to celebrate Software Freedom Day!

Congrats on the final release and thanks again for all your hard work! We have had several systems on 2.0 this year and have really appreciated all the new features and the work that went into it. It’s awesome to see the final release!

@Asal T. Saadeddin:
I think you will find that there is a strong opinion among the developers and much of the pfSense community that whatever box is used for a firewall should NOT run other software as you suggest. You may find a solution like that elsewhere but I think you can count on not finding it built into pfSense any time soon. My opinion is similar though maybe not quite as strong. However, I would tend to either buy a NetGate pfSense box for $200 with no moving parts as a reliable firewall and get a second system as a server, or if you have a powerful enough server and want to use the same hardware for everything, use a free virtualization solution (VMware ESXi Free, Citrix XenServer, or the free Hyper-V Server though you may have issues running non-Windows OSes in some cases with that) and run pfSense (especially with dedicated NICs) and another virtual machine for other services as you mention.

Wow! As I was installing my pfsense 1.2.3 for the first time on an ALIX board, on Saturday, you guys were releasing version 2.0! No, I’m not mad, just wanted to thank you for this free O/S which has awesome features, is useable and useful, and is so professional in everything. Thanks!

First of all : Well done guys, all my gateways have been migrated to 2.0 now. 1,2 production ones as well as 2.0-RC testing.
Only thing I’m really missing : virtio drivers. i do have virtual installs (yes, also productive ones) that work like a charm, but performance could be way better.

[…] on September 22, 2011 by Gerard Chris Buechler has announced pfSense 2.0: 2.0 Release available I’m proud to announce the release of version 2.0. This brings the past three years of new feature […]

Best firewall release ever. Not just a great job, it’s free and beats any commertial system in the weight cathegory. Using pfsense since 1.2 and it never failed me.
Keep it going! Congrats to Chris and his super team!